Analysis on the Influence of Incident Light Angle on the Spatial Aberrations of Acousto-Optical Tunable Filter Imaging

Acousto-optical tunable filter (AOTF) does not conform to the pinhole model due to the acousto-optic interaction. A calculation method of AOTF aberrations under the condition of incident light with a large arbitrary angle is proposed to solve the problem of coordinate mapping between object space and image space of the AOTF system without refractive index approximation. This approach can provide accurate pointing information of the interested targets for the tracking and searching system based on AOTF. In addition, the effect of cut angle values of the paratellurite crystal on aberrations was analyzed to optimize the design of AOTF cutting according to different application requirements. Finally, distribution characteristics and quantitative calculation results of AOTF aberrations were verified by experiments with different targets, respectively. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulations.